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Cons:

Old-school brawlers have seen a bit of a resurgence as of late. Games like Capcom's Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance and Sega's Spikeout: Battle Street have brought the beat-'em-up arcade experience to a new generation of gamers. Now Namco, the company responsible for the popular Tekken and Soul Calibur franchises, is entering the fray with its new street fighting title, Urban Reign.

In Urban Reign, players take on the role of Brad Hawk, a professional street brawler. When a citywide gang war breaks out in Green Harbor, Brad is hired to take on various gang bosses. Over the course of his battles, Brad will recruit other fighters to his cause, and ultimately uncover the real culprit responsible for starting the chaos. The plot is pretty basic and bland. And while the story does provide a decent enough explanation for why all of this fighting is taking place, it lacks any real depth to draw the player into the world.

Although the game's plot is watered down, the rest of its presentation is suitably impressive. The character models are sharp and well defined, and the environments have a decent amount of substance to them. The animations are smooth and fluid, and the game seems to have no problems handling all of the action taking place on the screen at any given time. The game's audio is no slouch, either. The rock/metal soundtrack fits the feel of the game, and the various sound effects do a great job of making the player feel like he's causing some real damage in combat.

The gameplay in Urban Reign feels like an unusual blend of Def Jam Vendetta and Power Stone. The battles take place in small arena-like settings, usually against two or more different opponents. The combat controls are fairly simple to pick up, but surprisingly deep. The player can use the control stick to aim for particular regions of an opponent's body (head, upper body, and lower body), eventually causing devastating damage. The player can also use the environment to his advantage, throwing people into parked cars, pounding them through storage shelves, and even running up the walls to evade oncoming opponents. Also, many stages include a variety of different weapons lying around, which a player can pick up and use to beat his foes senseless. Some moves are more effective than others, though. For example, I've yet to come across any battle in which the taunt button did anything other than leave me open to a brutal attack.